How a Silicon Valley trend is impacting an $8B Canadian farm industry

In Frontier, Sask., a town of fewer than 400 people, the Honey Bee Manufacturing plant looms large at 120,000 square feet.

The business, which makes headers and swathers, has grown from a two-man family operation to a manufacturer that employs roughly 200 people and ships agricultural attachments all over the world.

But Honey Bee is now monitoring a new challenge one more commonly associ‐ ated with Silicon Valley.

Just as some devices don't work with other companies' charging cables, some farm equipment now comes with tech that prevents farmers from using other brands' at‐ tachments - and companies like Honey Bee are con‐ cerned the practice is grow‐ ing.

"It's becoming more and more prevalent every day and every year," said Jamie Pegg, Honey Bee general manager.

Farm equipment has be‐ come much more digitized, prompting some companies to use digital locks. They say this protects their copy‐ righted technology and pre‐ vents hacking, said John Schmeiser, president of the North American Equipment Dealers' Association.

But that can become a problem, he said, when digi‐ tal locks are also used to stop one brand's products from working with another's.

Canadians can't currently bypass those locks without potentially violating the Copyright Act - and that can carry a serious penalty.

But change could be on the horizon.

A bill that was passed in Parliament last year and is working its way through the Senate would alter the Copy‐ right Act, making it legal to circumvent digital locks in the interest of interoperability.

Both grain farmers and consumer advocates are watching it closely. Many see the interoperability issue as an offshoot of the right-to-re‐ pair debate, where com‐ panies use proprietary tech‐ nology to stop customers from fixing their stuff on their own.

Though companies say they're for protecting copy‐ right, critics say digital locks are used to stamp out com‐ petition - and to keep rivals from developing new produc‐ ts that work with existing ones.

"Can you fix the thing that you own? Can you buy pro‐ ducts that interoperate with the thing that you own? These are fundamental free‐ doms," said Kyle Wiens, a U.S.-based right-to-repair ad‐ vocate and founder of the iFixit online repair guide.

iPhones and harvesting combines

"Interoperability" essentially means the ability of one product or system to work with another one.

Think of how Google Chrome works on an Apple device, despite being made by different companies.

Apple has also been criti‐ cized over the issue. For years, its phones didn't work with the USB-C connector that's become standard for many other devices. That changed following new Euro‐ pean Union rules, though the company has said mandating one type of connector innovation."

Interoperability is "ex‐ tremely important" in the agriculture sector, according to farmer Chris Allam. Farmers often mix and match different brands and tools for the best price or the most efficiency, but he said these days it's not a given that one brand's software will work with another.

"The farmer, out of frus‐ tration, will end up spending more money just buying two things that are the same brand so they work togeth‐ er," said Allam, who grows wheat, barley, canola and "stifles other crops on his farm east of Edmonton.

Wiens of iFixit pointed to John Deere's X-9 combine, a grain harvesting machine. That combine, currently lis‐ ted online for more than $1 million used, features a digi‐ tal port that prevents it from being used with non-John Deere implements, he said. John Deere did not respond to an interview request.

"They're using [software] in an incredibly anti-competi‐ tive way."

But legally, there's nothing stopping it from doing so.

Ag sector a 'prime ex‐ ample'

Farm equipment isn't the on‐ ly industry where interoper‐ ability is a concern - it also comes up in sectors like health care, automotive and gaming.

But "it's a prime example of the scale and the extent to which the problem reaches into domains that ... we tradi‐ tionally don't think of as com‐ puters," said Anthony Ros‐ borough, an assistant law and computer science pro‐ fessor at Dalhousie Univer‐ sity, who's written about the issue for the Canada West Foundation think tank.

At stake in Canadian farm implement manufacturing is roughly $2.4 billion in ex‐ ports and $8 billion in annual revenue, according to the

Agricultural Manufacturers of Canada.

The industry has devel‐ oped by creating specialty products that are tailored to Canadian crops and topography - those products are also of interest to coun‐ tries with similar conditions, like Australia and Ukraine.

Exports to the U.S. have grown more than 50 per cent between 2011 and 2021.

"These companies have been very innovative, they've been very creative, and they see a lack of interoperability as a little bit of a threat," said Schmeiser, whose associa‐ tion's members sell com‐ bines and tractors along with attachments and implemen‐ ts.

New bill aims to work around digital locks

There's hope that new legis‐ lation will make it easier for Canadian businesses to deal with digital locks.

A bill from Cypress HillsGrasslands MP Jeremy Patzer of the Conservative Party cre‐ ates a new exception under the Copyright Act.

It would allow people to circumvent technological protection measures in order to make one device interop‐ erable with another brand's, given the tech in question is lawfully obtained.

While the bill was written with the agriculture industry in mind, Patzer said promot‐ ing interoperability will have implications for "the entire economy."

"Anything that involves a plug-and-play-style device, it would have an impact on that."

WATCH | A separate rightto-repair bill is also making its way through the Senate:

Wiens agrees.

He believes the current Copyright Act is hindering all kinds of innovation - whether that's a new header that works with another manufac‐ turer's combine, or a new ice machine that plugs into an‐ other company's refrigerator.

"We're just missing those products right now."

Technical 'whack-amole' still a risk

There is some concern that a federal bill won't completely solve the problem.

While it should mean Canadian manufacturers no longer face a legal risk for re‐ verse-engineering their pro‐ ducts to work with other brands, they would still be stuck spending time and money trying to catch up with other businesses' soft‐ ware updates.

"I don't go to jail, but I still burn $1.5 million of the com‐ pany's money making this header work with that com‐ bine," said Scott Smith, com‐ ponent systems and integra‐ tion manager for Honey Bee.

"That combine can go through a software update from the [mainline manufac‐ turer] and then that's un‐ done and I start over - so that's a technical whack-amole."

Smith would like to see provincial legislation requir‐ ing that farm equipment be interoperable in order to be sold in Canada - similar to ex‐ isting laws that require min‐ imum warranties.

Nevertheless, the com‐ pany plans to take a moment to celebrate if the bill passes the Senate.

"We will be very, very ex‐ cited," said Pegg, the compa‐ ny's manager.